Yongshun County, China

Our first stop today was the longest glass bridge in China, over a gorge in the Zhangjiajie mountains which just opened a year ago . It was packed with Chinese tourists mostly. We amused ourselves in taking pictures of each other and our shadow but it was not scary. It’s just fascinating to me how the Chinese decide to built huge infrastructure over something they feel will attract lots of tourist on their parkland, they built hotels, restaurants, elevators, gondolas bridges and they figure the people will come and they do! From there we drive quite far through the countryside to get to the Heavens gate Mountains. There is a most unusual topography in these mountains, where there are 90 degrees walls of stone mountains there is a also a huge cave that became more like an arch due to erosion. The size is monumental we look like ants next to these interesting looking mountains. Today there are quite fewer people than yesterday and of course very few caucasians. We take an 8 person gondola. Then we take a shuttle bus to the top . We are to walk the entire surface at the top. They built these passage ways right on these 90 angle stone wall at this crazy altitude. It’s truly impressive. I’m not sure we would do this type of commercialization to our parks. After staying there for a few hours we took a series of the longest escalators in China. Then we walked 999 steps down with these magical views to the shuttle bus which will take us to our bus. The shuttle bus take us through 99 switching back turns and we see all these waterfalls on the way. The Chinese people really like the number 9. Our guide takes us to an awesome Chinese restaurant. This one was one of the better family style restaurants. After dinner some of us join the locals to dance on the streets. We get ready for our flight to Shanghai.